


Labor of Love

by SolarPoweredFlashlight



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 12:23:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16832536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolarPoweredFlashlight/pseuds/SolarPoweredFlashlight
Summary: A collection of drabbles about Caitlyn and Vi that touches on some of the rocky moments they've worked through as they get to know each other and learn how to work together in a relationship, and the love and lightness that they experience because of the ways they've learned to communicate better and understand one another.





	Labor of Love

**Like a Stone**

Vi tells herself she buys the beer to celebrate the latest win against the assholes who rule over the dark little corners of Piltover’s streets. When there hasn’t been a latest win, she tells herself she buys the beer because she’s earned it after a hard day.

As she extracts the last salvageable fraction of a drag from what remains of her cheap cigarette, a wave of loneliness hits her. Vi has never seen the ocean, never felt the crashing force of nature topple her and drag her under in a moment of overconfidence, so she doesn’t have the words to compare this dark feeling to rising tides or sucking sands – but oh, it is just as terrible, and just as inescapable, and just as utterly predictable and routine.

She crushes the butt into the makeshift ashtray of last night’s beer can.

The feeling swells up and Vi chugs down a reflexive gulp of tonight’s bottle of Mass Produced Shit Lite™. It passes down her throat like a smooth stone, and she takes no pleasure in it. Tears, unwanted, mount their attack from inside Vi’s heart and head, building somewhere behind her eyes and nose with a trembling vehemence.

Anger. Sadness. Hopelessness. Futility.

Loneliness, above all else.

She drinks again, as if the feeling is a fire that can be put out, a goblin that can be drowned.

Like medicine, she swallows with a feeling of obligation, a false sense of progression. She is sick with misery and alcohol is the promised cure.

But the more she drinks, the more she feels, and the promise falls flat. She hasn’t reached the point where she can bring herself to question it, that lying voice in her head that so often insists a cold beer will make it better, will wash clean whatever unpleasant emotion she is experiencing. She comes crawling back over and over, because _maybe this time it will work_.

She stares at the battered, ugly shells of her scrapyard-monstrosity gauntlets and sees in them the battered, ugly shell of a person she’s certain she’s become.

With a shuddering sigh, she reaches for her pack of smokes, lighter already in her hand.

Another one of those nights.

Welcome, she thinks bitterly, to the city of progress.

**Punch Drunk**

It’s familiar.

The cold, geometric press of the chain link at her back, the taste of whiskey at the back of her tongue and the taste of blood at the corner of her lip.

Some people say they love the scream of the crowd. Vi doesn’t even hear them.

She hears the sweep of her bare feet against the polished concrete, the throb of her heart in her ears, and the answering echo of her opponent’s feet.

Loose, ready, relaxed, tensed.

Her shoulders easy, her core and lower back coiled tight.

Elbows down, fists loosely curled.

He advances.

She keeps her breathing calm.

His blow comes, wide and sloppy. She deflects, pops him hard in the nose, dances away.

Vi licks her lips, feels the promise of bruising, tastes the coppery, sweaty sting of the split.

Doesn’t matter.

Doesn’t matter as long as she wins.

Calm, easy. Here he comes. Angry now – faster and sloppier.

He goes for a big hit. Vi takes his momentum, pivots on her hip, and flips him.

She doesn’t hear the roar of the drunken fans.

Just the gasping wheeze of the air leaving his lungs.

He’s done. That was a hard fall.

-

The boys at the office don’t question the split lip, the shiner over her left eye. They might have tried, when she first started, but they know she plays it off with a laugh and then goes cold if they keep pushing. She’s got the uniforms trained not to probe.

Her Detective, though. Detectives like to probe.

She skulks, on days when she knows the marks are visible. Stay on the beat, make sure to be hunched over paperwork between 10:15 – 10:20 when the Sheriff goes to the kitchen for her first tea of the day, be in the bathroom between 3:25 – 3:30 when she goes for the second.

Like perfectly aligned gears in an elegant hextech mechanism, Vi contrives to avoid Caitlyn during the days after a fight like this one.

But the damn woman has been paying more attention, lately.

Mind, she’s always paid attention to Vi.

_Always._

Professional, responsible, uncertain at first – gotta make sure that reformed crook isn’t taking advantage of her shiny new badge, yeah? Yeah. Makes sense.

But now Vi’s made the mistake of making herself noticeable, let slip that she’s smarter than the average bruiser. It’s nice that the Sheriff respects her, it really is, but it makes it a lot harder to keep her boss at arm’s length – and her quiet hum of hunger for her boss at arm’s length – when she keeps coming to her for advice on cases, and then actually listening.

So of course today Cait wants to talk about the background of gang, the layout of a crime scene, the intricacies of Zaun-Piltover street thug peace treaties – and damn, but there’s no way to avoid it.

The boss takes one look at her face and then drags Vi into the privacy of her office, commands her there with a soft but non-negotiable invitation that Vi wishes she could harness to a rickshaw and ride off into the horizon, never to be seen again.

“You didn’t file a report about any sort of physical altercation,” Caitlyn says.

“This?” Vi squeaks, like she hasn’t been extremely aware of the state of her face for the last four hours. “Oh, it’s nothin’. Didn’t happen on the job. Nothin’ to worry about, boss, nobody’s gonna sue ya.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Caitlyn says evenly, and damn her gay little heart for doing that fucking hopeful fluttery thing at the thought of Cait worrying about her. “Was it a boyfriend?” Vi’s incredulity at the absurd question is probably as obvious as her shiner. “Girlfriend?” Not any closer, but less of a stupid question.

“I’m fine,” Vi insists, slapping on her best grin, slathering on insincere sincerity like a sandwich shop hiding day old fish in their over-liberal application of spicy mayo. “Just some rough’n tumble with an old friend. Got a little more rough than tumble. No harm, no foul, yeah?”

The Sheriff is not convinced. She scrutinizes Vi’s face, and whether she’s searching for evidence of injury or evidence of falsehood, it makes Vi’s heart hammer.

“If you’re in trouble, you tell me,” Caitlyn says, finally. “When I hired you, we talked about – “

“Associations with criminal elements,” Vi says, parroting back Caitlyn’s own words at her exactly from six months ago. “I promise I didn’t get jumped by a knucklebreaker. It was just – just goofin’ around, is all. It won’t impact my work. I can see through it just fine – I forgot it was even there.”

Caitlyn very, very reluctantly drops it. Vi promises herself she’ll resist the call of the fighting ring from now on.

Of course, quitting an addiction is never quite as simple as a single well-meant promise.

**Go Shower**

“Hey Cupcake,” Vi shouts through the apartment, heavy door clicking shut behind her, “I’m back.”

“Are you all sweaty?” asks the amused, distant voice of her girlfriend from either the office or the bedroom.

“Yup,” Vi confirms, dropping her gym bag unceremoniously beside the front door and toeing off her shoes without undoing them.

“And are you planning on wrapping me in your sweaty self and kissing me?”

“Been thinkin’ about it the entire walk home,” Vi chirps merrily, stretching her loose and enlivened limbs and strolling through the apartment towards the extremely kissable owner of that voice.

Caitlyn laughs in her soft, quiet way. As Vi comes into their bedroom and around the corner of the bed, she looks up from the paperwork she’s got neatly set out on the only uncluttered corner of Vi’s drafting table. The Sheriff is smiling, tired after a long day but still not too tired to let warmth spill out of her eyes.

Vi leans in and kisses her like she’s been imagining for the entirety of the last fifteen minutes, soft with a touch of hunger, loving with a touch of pride. She comes away with a smile of her own.

“Go shower,” Caitlyn murmurs, a grin dancing in her tone, “and I’ll rub your back before bed.”

Vi beams. She could hardly ask for more.

But…

She strokes the barest edge of still-red knuckles against the exposed skin of her girlfriend’s upper arm.

“What about…?” Vi purrs, giving voice to some of the other thoughts that have been drifting through her mind.

To her delight, the touch puts a little shiver in Caitlyn’s breath.

Cait smirks at her, and Vi smirks back automatically.

“Go shower,” she says again, a promise of good things to come in the silky urgency of the command.

Vi scrambles to the bathroom, peeling off and discarding clammy clothing as she goes.

Afterwards, once she’s gone from sweaty to clean to sweaty again, she glories in a day well spent as she floats on the drifting raft of happiness in her mind. Caitlyn clings for a while, stroking her hair and whispering sweet praise in that wonderful barely-there daze that means Vi’s enthusiasm paid off.

“It must be adrenaline, or endorphins, or something,” Cait says softly, affectionately, amazed.

“Mmm?” Vi asks, pulled back from the verge of unconsciousness by the rather lucid statement.

“Oh, it’s just… how you can come home from hours of strenuous exercise and immediately want more.”

Vi hums, leans into her, settles a palm on her hip bone and kisses her pillow-soft, vulnerable with blissful exhaustion. She doesn’t have answers. She likes what she likes.

Caitlyn looks down at her, strokes a strand of vividly dyed hair behind her ear.

“You’re barely awake, aren’t you?”

“Mmhm.”

Caitlyn kisses her forehead, kisses her drooped-shut eyelids, kisses her lips.

“Sleep, Vi.”

She doesn’t have to tell her twice.

**Compromise**

Somebody has the radio at their desk turned on, playing tinny orchestral music of the sort Vi has never learned to enjoy. It makes her feel like she’s trapped in the limousine of a octogenarian with onion breath and an iron grip on the dial that controls the tunes, and she keeps tapping her pen obnoxiously against the form she’s staring at - _been_ staring at for twenty minutes now. 

Some fucker somewhere in this office thinks it’s relaxing, this awful fluctuation between triumphant Piltover Um-Pa-Pa and flittering Ionian flute, but Vi is sweating angry beads of perspiration just fighting the urge to demolish every audio-producing piece of hextech in a five mile radius. 

From a mile away, Caitlyn sees this. She speaks to Vi - frustrated by the music, and somehow incapable of completing her report because of it - and then speaks to the owner of the radio. Officer Runiez admits she plays the radio whenever Officer Vi does paperwork, because Vi mutters to herself and reads out loud whenever she’s faced with the grim spectre of typography. 

Vi does Not Like when Caitlyn attempts to fix this with best practices and scripts gleaned from the HR manuscript. She fights - fights with tooth and nail, and only because she likes this stupid big-hat bigwig against her better judgement - the temptation to tell her to fuck right off. For a long while, it seems like there’s no solution, no middle ground - just suffering.

It takes a few months to find room for it in the budget, but one day Vi comes into the office and there’s a fancy new hextech gadget - property of the Pilover Police Department, and theoretically for all of them - fancifully branded a Sleepless Secretary. It’s a dictation device, a typewriter-microphone hybrid with some extremely clever technology in between that turns the spoken word into the written. You do the talking, and it records.

Vi still suffers the agony of having to read out loud, but suddenly her reports take thirty minutes to write, instead of entire afternoons. Runiez stops playing her awful Jubblethinger’s Fifth Bowel Movement, or whatever faux-sophisticated Yordle-invented aural torture it is. 

And quietly, Vi is thankful that she trusted Cait to find a solution.

**Meditation**

The blindfold comes tight and in the darkness Vi finds her meditation. **  
**

It’s being on her knees, Cait’s hands in her hair -

Fingers on scalp, the soft whisper of short-buzzed hair offering no resistance -

A plunge into the depths of the longer side, rough pioneers in a fluorescent jungle with blonde roots, slithering like snakes, waiting to strike -

Here, the sharp grab, the pain, the way the tug of her mistress tightens there and loosens the rest of her body, frees her limbs of tension -

The gasp, as much at the pain as in exaltation at the release, the freedom.

Sideways, she pulls, yanks Vi over, to the floor.

Face on carpet, oh, it feels so good to be there, to be forced there, to be given permission - no, instructions - to go down and stay down.

All her life has been fighting - fight to stay on your feet, fight to get back on your feet when inevitably some fucker knocks you off them.

To go down willingly, to be allowed to give up, give in, surrender - and for that to be okay -

“My good girl,” Caitlyn says, and oh, the thrill, the rush, the feeling. Vi whimpers with the heady luxury of it.

Hands on her body, hands on her skin, a reassuring threat, a promise -

Guidance, mastery, control -

And it’s okay to let go, it’s okay to just be, because Caitlyn is here and she’ll take care of everything, and she knows, she knows -

Another gasp - fingernails on her thighs, and Caitlyn’s long brown hair tickling and trailing across her naked back, her neck, draping over her shoulder.

Thoughts flee, a flock of birds startled and taking flight en masse. Nothing left but feeling, nothing but her breath, her body, and her lover’s hands. 

**Checkpoint**

The beer in her hand has gone warm from how long she’s been not-drinking it. 

Where’s the time gone? What’s she been doing? Thinking? 

Sitting here alone at the bar, thinking, not even properly getting drunk. 

“There’s something going on in your brain,” the bartender, an old friend and once-upon-a-time friend with benefits in years past, remarks. Vi laughs and shakes her head at how fucking transparent she is. “I’d offer you a shot,” Jules says, with a familiar crooked little smile, “but I figure it’d just go to waste.”

Vi snorts a little chuckle and looks at her half full pint.

“How long ago did I order this?”

“Honey, you don’t want to know. I’m surprised you’re still trying to fool yourself into thinking you want to drink it.”

The thought of choking it down is miles less appealing now that it’s lukewarm, and even when it was icy cold she realised as soon as it hit her lips that she didn’t really want it. 

She tilts the drink from side to side and watches it dully. She knows what she wants, where she wants to be, who she wants to be with. Nothing’s really stopping her. It just scares her how _badly_ she wants it. 

“Things not going well with that new girl of yours? The captain?”

“The Sheriff,” Vi corrects quickly. “No, it’s. Sort of the opposite? Things are going super well.”

“And the job’s okay? Still feeling good about that whole being a cop thing?”

“Yeah. Yeah, no, it’s great. I really feel like I’m makin’ a difference.”

Jules scrutinises her, tapping the bartop. The place is mostly empty, which, Vi can only assume, is why she’s got so much time to spare for rummaging through things that aren’t her business. 

“It was that first thing, wasn’t it? The girlfriend.”

“I told you, it’s going great.”

“Too great.”

“The fuck’s _that_ supposed to mean?” Vi laughs, reflexively lifting her glass to her mouth, wrinkling her nose at the smell of the warm beer, and then setting it down again. Jules grins at her.

“You’re in love, aren’t you?” Her ex lover whispers, conspiracy bright in her eyes, a smirk tugging at her mouth.

“Oh fuck, don’t you go - don’t you go puttin’ that fuckin’ word in my mouth!” Vi hisses, pressing her face into her hands.

“Aw, Vi, darlin’, do you wanna talk about it?”

“I can’t,” she mutters through her fingers. “Fuck, I _can’t_ be in love with her. This is stupid, this whole thing is stupid, she’s going to wake up tomorrow and realise we’re too different, and then my fuckin’ heart is going to get broken.” And there it is - the impulse that drove her to the bar, and the admission that refused to be consoled by booze, the pride that stopped her from bumming a cigarette and ruining her progress. 

“You just said it’s goin’ great, you big baby. She’s not going to dump you. You’re allowed to have feelings for your own girlfriend!” Jules pats her condescendingly on the cheek. “Fuckit, I’m going to pour you a shot. You should be celebrating, not moping.”

It’s true - Vi’s not here because she’s upset, because something’s wrong. She’s here because she’s _scared_. 

She’s here because she’s pretty sure she’s feeling some serious feelings for Cait, and honestly? She hasn’t quite figured out how to not be completely terrified by the magnitude of them. 

Vi’s falling in love with her.

“ _Fuck_.” 

**Turbulence**

Vi slams the door shut behind her as hard as she physically can.

It’s pretty hard. She’s fairly certain she hears a Bad Snap that suggests there will be damage to be repaired. She doesn’t feel guilty in the moment, but she knows she will when the fury passes.

She storms down the front step in the cold, regretting leaving her jacket in her hurry to leave, but unwilling to go back in there to get it.

An itching, no, an ache begins in the tight, angry coil of her chest. It cries out balefully for a bottle of cheap beer and a pack of cigarettes.

Fucking Caitlyn. Vi slings a leg over her motorcycle and shivers. It’s going to be a miserable drive home without her jacket and if she crashes she’s totally fucked, but whatever. She can’t bring herself to care. Maybe it would be for the best.

Caitlyn probably drowns her regrets with a crystal fucking glass filled with twenty year old whiskey and ice made from fucking god damn Ionian fucking mineral water.

Vi thinks she hears the Sheriff behind her. She doesn’t turn back, just revs the engine obnoxiously and gets herself out of that driveway, eager to escape the claustrophobic trappings of this upper class neighbourhood.

She takes herself home, gets shitfaced in the solitude of her shitty apartment.

When she wakes up, there’s a new hole in the drywall between her bedroom and kitchen, and her knuckles are bloody. It’s noon already. She has three missed calls, all from Caitlyn. One at 11:42 pm last night, one at 8:21 this morning, and one at 12:01 - just a couple minutes ago.

Vi leaves the phone on her nightstand and staggers to the bathroom to vomit.

She spits the last of it into the filthy bowl, her head sagging towards the fouled waters. Self-loathing boils up inside of her. Useless. Immature.

Immature. That was the word Caitlyn used. Well, fuck her.

There’s a series of text messages waiting when Vi crawls back into bed.

“We should talk,” says the first one, and the dread that crawls its way up Vi’s throat at that feels like a spider made of stomach acid. So this is how it ends. She knew it was all too good to be true.

“I’d like to apologize,” says the second, “face to face.” A new sort of panic floods Vi’s chest, and her eyes dart to the door of her apartment, as if she’s about to hear the knock at any moment. When it doesn’t come, she returns her attention to the phone.

“But I’ll wait for you to tell me if that’s okay. If you need space, I won’t push you.”

And then suddenly Vi is crying again.

“I love you,” says the final message, “I realize I hurt you and I’m sorry.” 

**Touch**

Vi loves women. She loves the way they smile, she loves the way they smirk, she loves the way they feel beneath her hungry, loving hands.

Every lover she’s ever had, Vi has taken great pleasure in touching them. It’s a privilege she can never get enough of, an honour and a delight that never quite seems to sate her desire to be near, to feel, to experience them physically with skin on skin.

It comes a surprise when, for the first time in her life, Vi meets someone who touches _her_ that way.

Caitlyn doesn’t just respond to being touched, doesn’t just enjoy being touched – she _initiates_. She actually seems to actively crave Vi, crave the feel of her body, crave connection with her.

It’s new, and it makes Vi feel validated and wanted in a way she’s never experienced before.

Caitlyn invites Vi to shower with her and spontaneously slides hands into position to soap and massage her back, needing no words or pretense.

“That feels so nice,” Vi murmurs, cloaked in steam.

“Good,” Caitlyn says, and sounds like she’s smiling, sounds like she means it.

Caitlyn catches Vi’s gaze across the kitchen and seems to crumble, reaching for her face. She strokes Vi’s cheek like she’s something precious, and Vi can believe for the moment of contact that maybe she actually is.

Caitlyn seeks Vi’s presence even in moments of quiet and solitude, inviting her to her blanket sanctuary curled up on the couch, insisting on having Vi’s head in her lap so that she can stroke her hair as she reads. Vi falls asleep like this, stress draining from her body to the sound of pages quietly turning and rain on the living room window.

Caitlyn waits, catlike, for Vi to stumble awake on their shared day off. She makes eye contact, then without subtlety or guile rakes those intense blue eyes down the rest of Vi’s naked body. The sheets, tangled around Vi’s ankles, do nothing to protect her from that hunger – but oh, how good it feels to be bathed in the sincere heat of Caitlyn’s stare. How long has she been sitting awake in bed, thinking about Vi, looking at Vi, wanting Vi?

Caitlyn runs her knuckles down Vi’s neck, whispers a husky _good morning_.

Yes, Vi definitely feels wanted. More wanted than she’s ever felt with anybody before.

She captures Cait’s hand in hers, turns her head to kiss it.

“Good morning indeed,” Vi growls softly, a grin forming on her face.

**Fixer-Upper**

It’s a late night, spent holding the neck of a beer bottle and fighting with the immensity of the universe, the sharp edges of her past.

“I failed her,” Vi tells the warped reflection of herself in the glass. “I told her I loved her, and I told her that I would never leave her. She said I was the best thing that had ever come into her life. The sensible one.”

Caitlyn is there, quietly, gently. She must have woken up, realized Vi still hadn’t come to bed.

Vi has already had too much to drink, more than she should have, but at least she isn’t alone anymore. She can’t look at her partner, ashamed of her behaviour, ashamed of her puffy red eyes and the empties scattered across the coffee table. Cait softly pries the bottle from Vi’s clutching fingers, sits herself down on the sofa next to her.

“That sounds like a lot of pressure to put on anybody, let alone a teenager,” Caitlyn says, slotting her hand into the space left by the bottle. Vi squeezes hard, leaning in and putting her head on Caitlyn’s shoulder.

“I was supposed to be the person that saved her from herself. And I left her.”

“You have to want to change,” Cait says, stroking Vi’s scarred knuckles. “People can’t be forced to change. You could never have done it, even if you’d stayed. Not without her wanting that change for herself.”

“But I still failed her,” Vi says, tears rolling down her cheeks.

“You didn’t. You got out of a bad, unhealthy, mutually destructive relationship. You saved yourself.”

“At the cost of her wellbeing. She’s so much worse now. She’s killing people. All those people that have died at her hands, they’d still be alive if I could have just, just - “

“Shh,” Caitlyn says, wiping Vi’s eyes. “Jinx is responsible for the people she’s killed. Not you. It’s not your fault, love. Look at me.” Vi forces herself to look her partner in the eye. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You were just a child. It’s a miracle you got out of that environment at all.”

Vi blinks hard, presses her face to Caitlyn, and clings desperately to the bathrobe she threw on to come looking for her missing partner.

“She was never your responsibility to fix,” Caitlyn says, wrapping arms around her. Vi heaves great sobs against her, because even after these years, she still doesn’t quite believe it. She’s not sure if she ever truly will.

**Reverie**

“I want to try something new tonight,” she says, and Vi’s heart flutters in response.

“Okay,” Vi says, simultaneously certain and uncertain.

“Are you up for something new?” Caitlyn asks, gentle as a summer breeze, running fingers through Vi’s hair.

“Sure,” Vi says, smiling a little, giddy excitement prickling up her skin. “What’d you have in mind?”

“Something soft,” the Sheriff murmurs, backs Vi up against the edge of the bed, “something different.”

“Something vanilla?” Vi asks, raising an eyebrow. Soft doesn’t sound interesting, doesn’t sound scary in the fun way, and her initial thrill fades a little.

“No,” Caitlyn purrs, danger in her tone, a threat in the touch of her teeth at Vi’s ear, “definitely not vanilla.” The prickle of fear returns, and Vi is all the more appreciative of it. Caitlyn strokes Vi’s arm – just her arm, and that’s enough to fill her from toes to nose with broiling hunger. Vi loves when her partner uses that voice, when she rallies the full strength of her authority and turns it on full blast. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” Vi breathes, as Cait pushes her down to sit on the mattress.

“Yes _what_?”

“Yes ma’am,” Vi says, correcting herself quickly, feeling herself tumble down that rabbit hole in her mind just by saying the words out loud, by making their dynamic real and tangible.

“Good girl,” Caitlyn says, brushing Vi’s jawline with elegant fingertips, the contact piercing through Vi’s thoughts like the bright gold of sunlight through half-closed blinds. “You’re going to be so good for me tonight, aren’t you dear?”

“Yes ma’am,” Vi answers. It’s a dance, a routine, a ritual – with every correct response that Vi gives to Caitlyn’s series of questions, the more pieces of herself she gives away, the more of her armor she willingly removes and hands to Caitlyn to take care of for the time being.

“Who do you belong to, love?”

“You, ma’am.” Further, further, an exhale, another dandelion puff of control surrendered.

“Say it.”

“I belong to you, ma’am.” And now as she utters these words, they are true, and become more true in the saying.

“That’s my good girl.” Pleasure. It gives Vi such pleasure to receive this simple, asinine praise. She’s still herself enough to feel self-conscious about it, but that doesn’t stop her from experiencing the delight all the same. Good. She wants to be good. Whatever they’re trying tonight, she’ll show Caitlyn she can endure it. For her. To make her happy. To demonstrate the lengths to which she’ll push herself to earn that praise. “You are _mine_ ,” Cait says, and Vi closes her eyes and drinks the rich liqueur of those animal syllables. “Tonight you’re going to totally let go for me, love. Arms up.”

Obediently, Vi lifts her arms up. Caitlyn slips her hands below the hem of Vi’s sweatshirt and tanktop both and then shimmies them up and over her head. Vi would’ve just thrown them on the floor but not Caitlyn, no, Caitlyn is too orderly for that.

Cait takes the two shirts across the bedroom, pulls them free of each other, folds them and sets them on top of the dresser. Vi holds perfectly still and takes pleasure in the performance of self-discipline. Caitlyn is watching her in the mirror, she knows, although she looks at her knees instead of daring eye contact.

“Arms behind your back and sit up straight for me, love,” Cait says, sharp and loving, ruthless and fond. Vi does as she’s told and sits the way she knows Cait likes her – chest out, shoulders back, chin up. The Sheriff prowls her way back over to the bed with a hell of smirk on her gorgeous, perfect face and traces fingertips in hungry patterns along the contours of Vi’s tattoos. “So beautiful,” she whispers, bringing her hand up along Vi’s throat, grasping her chin. “My beautiful girl.” Vi swallows hard. These are things she’s never really thought of herself as, when it comes to labels, and the unfamiliarity of them makes it all the more arousing to have her Mistress thrust them upon her, reminding her that her preferences and her choices are secondary on this stage.

Vi looks up at her, makes eye contact. Caitlyn’s smirk becomes a smile - still awe-inspiring in its power, its charisma, but undeniably tender.

“I love you,” Caitlyn says, her eyes so blue, so honest, so all-encompassing that Vi forgets for a heartbeat she ever knew anything but this instant of perfect peace. She resurfaces from the undertow of her submission briefly, thoughts and memories and sense of self reassembling, and she smiles back up at Caitlyn.

“Love you too, Cupcake,” she says, soft and earnest, and although she’s still holding her arms obediently behind her back the taut tension of the scene takes a moment to sigh and give slack. Caitlyn kisses Vi’s forehead, allows the note of the moment to linger sweet and ringing, and then gets back to business.

“Arms up,” Cait says, and works Vi’s sports bra up and over her head when she follows the order. “Good girl,” she murmurs, with another kiss to Vi’s chest as she works her way down, “Now the bottoms.” In short order, Vi is naked. “Up on the bed, love, on your front.”

Vi clambers up on top of the covers and turns herself around, unsure of what’s about to happen. Thus far the tone has been remarkably gentle, but Cait has deceived her before. Vi feels the cold air on her uncovered body and wonders where the surprise – perhaps the strike – will come. Back? Ass? The backs of her thighs? Her feet? Fuck, she hopes not her feet. She’s ticklish and not in a fun way. But Cait would never actually do anything Vi _genuinely_ disliked, and the confidence and trust she places in her lover allows Vi to dismiss that concern quickly.

Vi presses her face into the pillow, closes her eyes, and listens to the familiar sound of Caitlyn opening and retrieving something from the drawer beside the bed. She smiles into the pillowcase as she identifies the particular jingle of the leather cuffs, and slips back into the comfortable embrace of her submission as Caitlyn’s weight on the bed makes the mattress shift. Air becomes important so she turns her face to the side instead of pressing it into fabric and feathers, flickering her eyes open and looking at the sheets for a moment.

“Close your eyes,” Cait commands lightly, seeing this, and Vi does. Sometimes it’s the small things, the attention to detail, the tiny adjustments, that Vi loves the most. “Good girl,” Caitlyn murmurs. No, correction – it’s that. Vi loves those two words the most. Caitlyn sits herself on top of Vi, claiming the throne of her ass, and methodically encases her wrists in leather.

“You’re going to completely surrender for me, love,” Cait says, massaging her fingers up through the short hair at the back of Vi’s neck. “I want you to let go of every thought, every worry, everything. Let go and trust everything to me, tonight.” This is new. Caitlyn’s never asked for this before. But they’ve been doing this for a while now, and maybe – just maybe – this is actually possible. The mattress groans gently as Caitlyn reaches over to the nightstand to retrieve something. “Head up,” she says, and Vi lifts her head. She feels the blindfold slip over her face and as it does another vestige of her self-control is lost. “There’s my girl,” Caitlyn murmurs, leaning in and kissing the bump of her spine right between her shoulders. “I feel how tense and tight you are. Relax for me, love. Submit to me, submit to my touch. I want you to let go.”

As Caitlyn talks her through it, Vi finds the tightness in her muscles and deliberately does her best to release it. It’s a new kind of submission, but it’s undeniably submission – undeniably kinky, as Caitlyn promised. She isn’t being pampered, she’s utterly relinquishing her right to anything but being clay for her Mistress to shape. “That’s it,” Caitlyn says. “Be good for me, love. I forbid you from thinking. Your job is only to obey. Leave the thinking to me.”

Vi hears the sound of a plastic cap popping open, smells the massage oil. She breathes out, slow and steady, and when her lover’s hands touch her back she doesn’t jump or start, only eases into the touch.

“I want you to put your mind aside and exist only in your body,” Caitlyn murmurs, fingers gliding over muscles, finding the knots upon which she’ll mount her sensual attack. “There is nothing but me. Nothing but my voice. Nothing but my orders. Nothing but my touch.” As she says it, Vi releases her hold on life outside of this moment, word by word, and accepts these commandments as her new reality. “Am I understood?”

“Yes ma’am,” Vi says, and doesn’t even have the presence of mind to be surprised at how soft and easy the affirmation flows from her lips.

“Good girl,” Caitlyn says, digging her thumbs in to just the right spot and drawing a long sigh from somewhere deep inside of Vi. “Such a good girl. You’re mine, and I’ll take care of you. Just relax, and forget everything but me.”

Vi fades away into the steady tide of sensation and guiding words from her lover, letting go piece by piece. She’s come to this strange, floating depth before, usually in the heat of an intense flogging or caning. Tomorrow she’ll analyze it, but in the moment there is nothing but experiencing it, living it, feeling it. There is nothing but Caitlyn, Caitlyn’s voice, Caitlyn’s orders, Caitlyn’s touch.

Hers.

Vi is so happy to be hers.

**Tradition**

“My grandmother used to make these cookies every winter,” Caitlyn says as she stirs. There’s a softness there, a warm kind of vulnerability. Like an old lightbulb, one of the ones where the tech wasn’t very good yet so the glow was dim, the bulb was hot and breakable.

But sometimes there’s something romantic about old-fashioned things.

Vi darts a finger into the mixing bowl and steals a glob of dough before Caitlyn can react, stuffing it directly into her mouth. Her eyes shut blissfully.

“Holy fuck that’s tasty,” she groans. Caitlyn laughs and bumps her reproachfully with a hip.

“You have no reverence for anything, do you?” she teases.

“Of course I do,” Vi counters, propping her chin on Caitlyn’s shoulder and watching her stir the mixture. “I have reverence for your Grandma’s cookies and how delicious they are. I just have, yanno, my own style of worship.”

Caitlyn laughs, melted by Vi’s absurd and unflappable nature. She releases the spoon to bring her hand to Vi’s face, stroking her cheek affectionately. From her peripherals she can see her partner’s eyes flutter shut with that same expression of uncensored delight that the cookie dough earned.

Vi is startled slightly when she feels something cold at her lips. She blinks her eyes open in surprise, and beams brilliantly when she finds Caitlyn offering her a fingertip coated in chocolate chip oatmeal batter.

“You _must_ love me, to be breaking Grandma Rules,” Vi says, before she accepts the gift with great enthusiasm.

“When my parents weren’t looking,” Caitlyn confides, turning her head to kiss Vi’s temple, “my grandmother always let me have a little bit of the batter. Every year, no matter how old I got. So I suppose it’s part of the tradition.”

“S’a good tradition,” Vi says with her mouth full, a smear of chocolate at the corner of her lips.

“It is,” Caitlyn says, with that same vulnerable softness in her voice. “And, by the way, I _do_ love you. Quite a bit.” It isn’t the first time they’ve said these words to one another, not by a long shot, but it still fills Vi with a thrill of joy.

“I love you too, Cupcake,” she purrs, leaning in to give her a chocolate-infused kiss. She’s grinning when she pulls away. “Or should I call you Cookie, now?” 


End file.
